Past Imperfect

TWENTY-EIGHT

Limoges, May 1982

Alain Duclos picked up the smoked salmon on a small octagonal wedge of bread and popped it in his mouth. The waiter paused to see if he'd choose another: caviar, prawns or pate with chives. Duclos just nodded and the waiter moved on.

RPR celebrations for victory at the local elections. The last bash two years ago had been held in a grand downtown civic hall, replete with marble columns, ornate chandeliers and filigreed plaster ceilings. But parking had been atrocious, so they'd opted for a modern hotel function room on the edge of town. The waiters with their liveried costumes and silver trays looked somehow out of place in this room with its low ceilings and suffused fluorescent lighting.

For the first forty minutes of the reception, Duclos had done little more but nod like a toy dog on a car's back shelf at the incessant chain of congratulations. 'Thank you. I'm so glad that you could make it. And thank you for your support during our campaign'. Once or twice, he'd even made the mistake of asking, 'And how's business?' to be caught up in endless tales of corporate woe that invariably ended: 'Perhaps there might be some influence you could bring to bear.'

Trite smiles in response. 'I'll see what I can do,' but thought: assholes. Even if he could affect entire industry sectors at the local level, invariably an opposing sector would start whinging and lobbying. Just smile, convince them they're your friends, look concerned, really, really concerned; and if pressed, tell them how theirs is an industry and an issue with the highest possible priority on your list. But in the end do fuck all. It was safer. Less friends and votes were lost keeping the status-quo as it was.

He was glad now of a moment alone at last. A chance to survey the room fully rather than just surreptitious sweeps between nods and smiles at some fawning local businessman or Chamber of Commerce representative. His wife was not far away, just visible beyond a small group towards the bar, talking to one of his main female PR aides — friends from before they were married when the two girls worked together in his offices. She'd made few friends since.

Eighteen months of marriage. No euphoria or bliss, that had certainly never even been expected by him; and, if he'd troubled to ask, possibly her too. Just convenient. Useful. Cut the right image for the electorate. They looked good together, and he had become increasingly aware that as he approached his mid-forties and still wasn't married, questions were beginning to get asked.

She'd been working in his offices almost fifteen months before he really noticed her and started asking about her; before he'd been too pre-occupied with his problems with Chapeau to think about anything else. Her application file also helped provide some background: Betina Canadet. Thirty-two years old. Single. Studied and gained a degree in social economics from the Sorbonne. Worked mainly in civic offices in Rouen where her family originally lived. Joined the RPR in 1976 and applied to the Limoges party offices in late 1979 when her family moved to the area.

The rest he discovered from one of his main aides, Thierry: 'What, the ice maiden?' Duclos was intrigued. Thierry was a mine of information on office gossip and politics. Two people in the office had already tried their luck and struck out. Thierry covered the obvious quickly: No, she wasn't a lesbian, and certainly one of the men she'd liked. 'Went out with him for three months before coming clean with her problem.' She just didn't like sex. Tragic case: victim of a date rape in her early twenties, it was many years afterwards before she could even bear to be in the company of men, let alone start feeling comfortable with them or, God forbid, actually touching them. Had to give her time; be gentle with her. The relationship only lasted another six weeks. 'Who has time to spend as an emotional counsellor in the hope that after a year or so she might, just might come in from the cold. Maybe she never will. Who knows?'

Duclos started dating her a month later. 'What is this, the ultimate challenge?' Thierry teased him. 'It's not enough just to swing the electorate, now the challenge is the ice maiden. See if you can succeed where all others have failed?'

Duclos' droll smile in return hinted that the North Pole had already been conquered. 'All it took was the right man to hit the defrost button. Some have it, some don't.'

In reality, it was a relationship built almost entirely on her veneration of his political stature and power and his patience with her sexual and emotional instability. She had never met anyone so patient and understanding.

He looked across at her now and she gave him a tight little smile. She'd hardly changed in the two years: somewhere between Twiggy and Piaf, with large blue eyes that pleaded ‘help me, save me, I'm frail’.

It was far from love. It had been like taking some frightened little deer in from the forest, making her feel comfortable and secure. He'd become her protection from the world outside, from all those nasty, grabbing men and their demands. Yet she carried guilt too, was worried that she wasn't pleasing him the way she should, despite his countless reassurances: he didn't see her like that. She shouldn't worry. He loved her for her soul, her character, her kindness and vulnerability — the sex was far less important. When she was ready, it was okay with him.

She would literally be tearful at his patience, his understanding. And between her summoning the effort, the work that made him tired or him pleading that he felt uncomfortable because he sensed she was forcing herself just for him — they made love at best once every other month. He could manage that, and from certain angles she even had a slight boyish quality. Perhaps that was what had made him first notice her. And, to cap it all, his work colleagues were slightly in awe at his sexual prowess in melting the 'ice maiden', succeeding where they had failed, bringing out the woman in her.

His only worry was that one day she would thaw out. She would look at him with those big eyes suddenly brimming with passion rather than vulnerability and uncertainty. That as she became more insistent and demanding and he was still reluctant, making excuses, she would finally guess his secret. The lie would be out.

He shook off a faint shiver. That wasn't now or even in the near future; hopefully never. And he'd had three years now out of the shadow of Chapeau. No calls or demands in the dead of night, the constant bleeding him dry, Chapeau's goading smile and sly humour.

Three years? It felt as if ankle chains and a yoke had suddenly been removed. He'd never known such freedom. Or happiness. He looked back towards his wife and smiled.

Muffled sounds of the city. Faint drone of traffic, the occasional car horn beeping. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailing. Dominic was more intent on the words on the tape that drifted through the half open door into the hallway.

'… Madame Arnand usually gives me some pan chocolat, if her husband isn't there.'

'How many times a week do you call by there?'

'Maybe two or three times. But sometimes he's there, and she doesn't give me any. Just winks when he's not looking as if to say, 'next time' and nods sideways. Madame Arnand explained once that he was too mean, she'd get into trouble if she gave it away while he was there. He'd rather feed it to the chickens or let it rot.'

'And the boulangerie is on your way from school to the farm?'

'Yes. It's only a few hundred metres from the school. I have to walk almost another half kilometre to the farm. But usually I have a friend with me.'

Monique was two-thirds of the way through listening to the tape sent by Calvan. Dominic had played it twice as soon as it arrived at the station, then replayed some selected segments. Except for the main, obvious details, little of it meant anything to him — and it struck him, listening to the tape, how little he'd really known about Christian. He'd dealt with the investigation, typed up endless reports about the attack and murder — had eaten, slept and dreamt little but the case for months. But really, at heart, he had known little or nothing about the boy. He'd been dealing with his death, not his life.

Christian's life had taken up ten whole years of his wife's existence — from her mid-teens to mid-twenties — and as he became immersed in the voice on the tape, he realized how little he knew about those ten years. Ridiculous, pathetic. Married to the same woman for thirty years and yet whole segments of her life were still strange to him.

And through the years, he'd never asked. Always thought it would be too painful, too awkward, something to be swept away and relegated to the past, to history, where it belonged. Yet this ten year old boy — this boy whose last hours on earth he knew everything about, every last shocking, gory detail, yet whose life was a complete void to him, a tome of blank pages — had always been with them. At the birth of their first son, Yves. At Gerome's birth. At the two christenings. At the moments they might drive past a field and Monique would survey the shifting wheat thoughtfully. At her gaze across a candle-lit dinner table, when she would suddenly focus on the flickering flame and he would be lost beyond it. Her eyes would water and he knew in that moment that the memory had drifted back.

Each time it showed in her eyes as the years were stripped away. A look burdened with pain and anguish, yet with just a dash of joy and irony — a thick emotional soup sieved through misty veils of time. Then finally serenity, acceptance mellowing the sorrow. A look that said: Of course I remember. How could I forget? Sad, lost memories. The few pathetic tokens remaining of the love that was.

A love that Dominic had never witnessed, never been party to, never asked about. Never been able to put flesh and blood and words and actions to — except those looks in his wife's eyes through the years. Sudden, threatening grey clouds that invariably as quickly drifted away.

Until the tape. And he thought: Oh God. God. Could that really be the voice? Substance suddenly put to the ghost, the memory that had lurked in the shadows of his life the past thirty years? Or was it just a hoax? Conflicting emotions wrenched at his gut, made him feel empty inside yet strangely excited at the same time. Taragnon. The village shops. The farm. At least those parts seemed accurate. Playing, rewinding, playing again — agonizing over small nuances and phrases before finally settling back. How could he be sure? How could he possibly know? He hardly knew anything about the boy. He was nothing but a shadow, a shadow of memory that only flickered alive again now and then in his wife's eyes.

But at least he'd answered the main question: it seemed real enough to be given a hearing by Monique. The main details were accurate, it wasn't some ridiculous account which had fallen at the first hurdle over inaccurate village descriptions or the boy heading in the wrong direction back to the farm.

Dominic wondered if deep down that was what he'd hoped for. Something that meant he could pack the tape back to London without even troubling Monique. Consign it back to history where he'd so far safely corralled everything by not asking questions, by not raising the issue, by never mentioning the police investigation or the trial and its aftermath, Jean-Luc or Machanaud. Safe.

But another part of him wanted desperately for it to be real. For what? To know what really happened in 1963? To assuage his own guilt over Machanaud? Was that the trade-off? Satisfying his own guilt at the expense of Monique's peace of mind. Re-awakening the ghosts after all these years, bringing the pain and shadows back to her eyes. He sweated and agonized over the tape as it played, was tempted to rip it out and sent it back at one point, before the weight of detail and the small lost voice got to him, grabbed hard at his insides and fired an intense, burning curiosity. He wanted to know. He wanted desperately to know if it was real.

And that was when he started convincing himself that he was doing it equally for Monique. She would want to know too. How would she feel if she discovered that he'd covered up? That he'd sent the tape back without even letting her hear it. To protect her from the horrors of memories past? She would see only that she had been robbed of the opportunity of some link with her long lost son, however tenuous and remote. Too many buried secrets. It would be almost as bad as staying silent, not speaking out in court on behalf of Machanaud. Almost.

The tape was rewinding. A button clicked. A segment was being played over again.

'… when we finally did take the rubber ring to the beach, it was so big I almost fell through the hole.'

'Where was that?'

'Nartelle beach… near St Maxime.'

When he'd first handed the tape to Monique, she'd showered him with a deluge of questions: Where? When? Who? Which psychiatrists? He'd answered mainly with stock terminology from Marinella Calvan; he'd called her back shortly after the first playing to clarify key points: Past life regressions. University of Virginia. Started as a standard psychiatric session. Young English boy of a similar age to Christian's — lost both his parents in a car accident. Xenoglossy: use of a foreign language unknown to the main subject. 'The regional patois has already been authenticated, but now they need to know about the main details on the tape.' As he spoke, he could see Monique become increasingly perplexed and confused, staring at the tape blankly — and in the end his shoulders slumped in exasperation. He held his arms out. 'Look — I know it sounds strange. I have no idea if it's real or just a hoax either. But details of the village are at least accurate. Play the tape and let's talk afterwards, we'll go into the details and background then. If necessary, you can phone this woman in England yourself — let her explain everything directly.'

Click. Stop. Rewind. Click again.

'… the tyre was quite big… as if it belonged to a van or truck. My friend and me decided to pick it up and roll it home. It took two of us to roll it home.'

'What was your friend's name?'

'Gregoire.'

'And he went to the same school?'

'Yes.' A pause. The boy swallowing, his throat clearing. 'When we finally got it home to the farm, the inner tube only had one puncture. My father was able to fix it easily so that we could take it to the beach one day. I could use it as a big rubber ring…'

Dominic hovered halfway between the hallway and the kitchen, listening. He wanted to leave Monique alone while she listened to the tape. Alone with her thoughts and emotions. Hadn't wanted to see the expression on her face or look on expectantly like some eager schoolboy waiting for exam results. So? So? He'd made an excuse about making a snack in the kitchen — had got as far as spotting some Brie in the fridge and some rye biscuits in the biscuit tin — but had been drawn back into the hallway by the sound of the tape playing before putting the two together.

Click. Stop. Rewind. Play.

'… The camp's one of my favourite places. I built it against the back of a stone wall in the field at the back of the house.'

'How far away from the house is it?'

'A hundred metres or so. From there, I can clearly see the back courtyard and the front door, see if anyone…'

Ring, Ring. Ring, Ring. The sudden loud jangling of the telephone in the hallway crashed abruptly into Dominic's thoughts, made him jump. He suddenly remembered he'd asked to be phoned at home for any news from the hospital on the police officer. One was out of danger, but the other was still critical.

He picked it up, nodding numbly to the first words, his mind still on the tape and his wife. 'I see. I see. When was this? I see. Crippled, you say?' He realized his voice sounded bland; detached, disinterested. He injected more enthusiasm. 'When will they know for sure the damage done by the shattered vertebrae?'

'…can see my mother working in the kitchen and I know then that it's time to come in. I know if my father is in the garage, because he always has the light on… there's no windows.'

'They're doing more X-rays now. Then as soon as they have those back apparently they're scheduling another operation. They should know more soon after that.'

'I see. So, how long? Six hours, twelve?'

'Ten or twelve probably. I doubt we'll know much more till tomorrow morning.'

'… I always helped her if I could. I missed her so much later, as I did my parents.'

'I see.' Dominic's skin bristled. Distracted. Trying to take in the two voices together.

'But don't expect any miracles. They're pretty sure he won't get the use of his legs back. They just don't know yet how bad the rest might be.'

'…and I remembered thinking, my father… my father… why didn't he come and try to find me…'

'I understand.' Scant relief. No tricolours on coffins, but a home visit nevertheless. A hospital visit. A meeting with his wife and close relatives. Stumbling condolences.

'… kept thinking how they couldn't face that I'd become lost from them… that I'd somehow let them down… their sorrow. My mother's face, so sad…so, so sad… her-'

Click. Stop. Silence.

Dominic listened out for the machine clicking again, but there was nothing. Monique had obviously finished with the tape.

'…That's all there's left to know now. Whether the rest of his body will also be affected. Arms and upper body.'

'I see. I understand.' Attention completely gone now. Only one thing he wanted to know. 'Let's talk again tomorrow morning — hopefully more will be known then.' Dominic rang off.

Walking back into the lounge to confront Monique, despite his wish not to pressure her or make her feel awkward in any way, his impatience he was sure came through — he probably did look like a schoolboy anxious for his exam results. Not saying anything, but his eyes saying it all, and thinking: So? So?

Monique didn't answer for a moment, looked down and away before finally lifting her gaze to speak. But the words themselves were secondary, he had already read it in her eyes. The storm clouds, the grey shadows, had returned. And this time he feared that they would take far, far longer to drift away.